Letters from a pioneer African American community in Wisconsin

Papers of Charles Shepard and other residents of the black settlement of Pleasant Ridge (now Beetown), Wisconsin.

Charles Shepard and his family were the first African American family to settle in what became a pioneer black community near Lancaster, Wisconsin. In 1848, Virginia planter William Horner moved to Wisconsin, bringing their freed slaves, Charles and Caroline Shepard, and the Shepard's three children. The letters here consist largely of communications between the Shepards in Wisconsin and their relatives in the east.